THE EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE

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The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

BY PETER F. DRUCKER

The book, Effective Executive, written by a renowned management specialist and a classic theorist is best pick for working professionals who want to elevate their effectiveness a million, and one notches higher. The author, Peter Drucker, began by explaining the importance of effectiveness to an executive. An executive in this context includes both manager and leaders who is expected to make a decision by virtue of their position, and have significant impact on the performance or result of the company. An executive is expected to be better equipped with the right knowledge and competence that can help make the right decision at the right time. Effectiveness is the primary function of the executive. It is a habit that can be learned, moreover; Peter Drucker points out seven  habits of the mind that must be learned and acquired to be an effective executive. These habits include:

1. KNOW THY TIME: Executives start their day off by planning their task, but effective executive starts their day off by recording actual time use and disposing of this little time in large chunks. Also, of high importance is the ability to fish out unproductive, time-wasting activities and possibly get rid of them knowing that time is a limiting factor; it has to be managed effectively. This can be done by asking oneself, “what do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness.” If this question can be answered truthfully, a chunk of your time will be retrieved.

2. WHAT CAN I CONTRIBUTE?: This is a question that stresses on responsibility. Most executives focus on what the organization owes then or should do for them. Any professional that emphasizes his downward authority is a subordinate no matter how exalted his rank is. On the other hand, any professional who takes responsibility and focuses on contributions no matter how junior is an effective executive. To be an effective executive, you must always ask yourself what you can contribute to avoiding aiming at the wrong things. Every organization needs performance in three major areas: it needs direct results, the building of values and their reaffirmation, building, and developing people of tomorrow. All these three organization needs have to be built into the contribution of every executive.

3. MAKING STRENGTH PRODUCTIVE:  An effective executive maximizes all available strength: the strength of subordinates, strengths of associates, the strengths of a superior, and one’s own strength. They understand that where there is strength, there will always be weaknesses; therefore, focuses more on strength than weaknesses. They delegate the task to individuals base on what they can do best and taking into account their functional qualities. 

4. FIRST THING FIRST: Effective executives tend to focus on one thing at a time and understand the need to concentrate time, effort, and resources at greater and major opportunities. The author made his readers understand that the more you can concentrate resources, strength, and time on a singular point of application, the more you can achieve a number of important tasks at a much less time. The secret of focus is to establish posteriorities. Establishing posteriority means choosing tasks that should not be done and sticking to it. This can be done by choosing the future over the past, focusing on possibilities rather than problems, and aiming at something significant rather than a goal that is easy and safe to achieve.

5. THE ELEMENT OF DECISION: Effective executives think clearly and deeply before making a decision. They understand that problems are symptoms of underlying situations; therefore, one of the great strategy an effective executive implements is understanding the leading cause of a problem. Also, they understand that the thing one worries about never happens.

6. EFFECTIVE DECISIONS: Effective executives understand that to decide is based on choosing from opinions, then measuring the effectiveness of the action based on one or more predetermined criteria or feedback. 

7. UNDERSTAND MANAGEMENT VS. LEADERSHIP: Effective executives understand that management its a tool for accountability for the day to day operations, and leadership is the road to build a better future for the organization and the people trusted to them. An effective executives, build trust and guidance for the day to day management, but his attention should be fully focused on the future.

In conclusion, to be an effective executive, one must record where the time goes, focus your vision on contribution, focus on using your strength and making it productive, prioritize the most important task first and take rational action. 

 

THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS

Key point #1: Effectiveness can be learned

Key point #2: Effective executive record, manage, and consolidate time.

Key point #3: The effective executive does not focus on minimizing weakness but maximizing strength.

One Last Thing

“Most effective executive is entrepreneurs, entrepreneur, and entrepreneurship – the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.” -Peter Drucker

 

SLIDEOLOGY:THE ART AND SCIENCE OF CREATING GREAT PRESENTATION

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Nancy Duarte, a presentation designer, and coach, altered the world of presentations by producing an easy-to-read masterclass on presentation — SLIDEOLOGY. Slideology talks about advanced presentation designs. It assumes that the presenter will probably utilize Microsoft powerpoint or other presentation software such as Google slips or Keynotes, an integral part of their presentation but one of the core strengths of Slideology is the fact that it explains the process of better presentation planning, design and delivery whether you utilize slideware or not. In addition, it introduces readers to 3 pillars of presentation competence which are:

1-  Create a strong story

2-  Illustrate with simple visual

3- And deliver with conviction

We, humans, are visual communicators; presentations must be delivered longer in forms of images/diagrams as visual aids. Slides should be simple and the text should be reduced, preventing bullet points. Text should be no less than 30 font.

Slides are there to improve the story and also to help the readers see what the presenter is saying  so the ideas/messages can be transmitted efficiently. Use icons instead of numbers as images tell a better story. When people relate better, it increasing the retention of data. Using various icon brings information to life.

To give a strong presentation, the presenter should know his/her audience to get ready for material and shipping. Pace info across multiple slides to increase its impact. The number of slides to present is dependent on one good rule: the 10/20/30 rule that says- 10 slides, 20 minutes and  no fonts smaller than 30.

Nancy went further to examine three things that ought to be handled creatively in a consistent way to avoid noise or confusion:

  • Deal elements: contrast (to help the audience see primary things), hierarchy, unity, space, closeness and stream.
  •  Visual elements: background, color (appropriate color palette), text and images.
  •  Movement: time, speed, distance, direction and eye flow

Duarte divides the book into five core areas:

  1. TREAT YOUR AUDIENCE AS KINGS

They didn’t even come to your presentation to see you. They came to determine what you may do for them.  Provide content that resonates and make sure it’s clear what they’re to do.

  1. SPREAD IDEAS AND MOVE PEOPLE

Communicate your ideas with strong grammar to engage all of their senses. They’ll adopt the ideas as their very own.

  1. HELP THEM SEE WHAT YOU’RE SAYING

Think like a designer and movie producer and guide your audience through each idea in a manner that can help their comprehension. Appeal not only to their verbal perceptions but to their visual impressions as well.

  1. PRACTICE DESIGN, NOT DECORATION

Don’t limit your content to pretty talking points. Instead, present information in a way that makes complex information clear.

  1. CULTIVATE HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS

Display information in the best way possible for comprehension rather than focusing on what you need as a visual crutch.

 

THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS

Keypoint #1: Develop flow within a slide intentionally.

Keypoint #2: People’s retention of data increases when they can “see the numbers.”

Keypoint #3: Think like a designer to create effective slides.

One Last thing

“Don’t blend in; instead, clash with your environment. Stand out. Be uniquely different. That’s what will draw attention to your ideas.”

― Nancy Duarte, Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences

VALUE AS A SERVICE: EMBRACING THE COMING DISRUPTION

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Rob Bernshteyn, Chief Executive Officer and President of Coupa, gives a step-by-step manual for today’s business leaders on how they can better provide and measure the delivery of value to customers. The writer was driven by the desire to create dialog and industry about where things are going based on a lot of quantifiable successes, he alongside his group has generated in Coupa with their customers. The book summarizes the new standard brewing in business and examines how companies are gravitating offerings that offer a value to customers. Successfully delivering Value as an Agency requires a brand new sort of relationship between sellers and clients, one that’s results-based, as opposed to a transactional exchange of services and goods for money.

It is more of a partnership where both parties are permitted to support each other as well as hold each other responsible for achieving measurable results they have both agreed upon. Rob went further to explain regions of change which will be required for a business comprising of individuals with a different skill to offer value as a service. Given that change is difficult and any type of business transformation generally encounters change immunity and making this change is the hardest portion of transitioning to value as a service, the right leadership ability is required to lead the business through.

Among the key elements needed according to Rob is the leader needs to work to instill a set of core values that the full company will also ascribe to be willing to work with. Signing up for value starts from your first commitment to your prospects. They ought to get a feeling of the value clients are achieving utilizing your service. Sales discussions should focus not only on features and functions, product demonstrations or product benefits. Instead, they ought to start as authentic and receptive learning sessions about the customer’s strategic management, assets and needs. Rob describes one  Coupa strategy which has helped the organization sell value as a service.

He said, ”it is a policy from our business to sign a contract but to achieve an agreement on particular business success standards that we’ll work together to attain. In our line of business, a typical arrangement could be that together we’re going to save a hospital network $50 million on syringes, scrubs, bed linens, IT and maintenance and cut their order fulfillment and processing time by 60 percent. By working together to set these very specific, quantifiable goals, we’re already setting the tone for another type of relationship.” This effort has to be supported through an internal culture of value creation that is based on worker empowerment. In Value as a Service world, the two parties involved should remain focused on what they’re currently attempting to do together. This is where workers need the culture behind them. To get the best from your employees and clients, you want to create this culture.

And building this culture starts with clearly and frequently communicating the company values. Leadership should communicate them repeatedly until they’re tired of repeating them, and at that point, they should keep repeating them. To deliver Value as a Service, you should be able to put a greater burden of responsibility on staff members. That’s why they need a strong structure and culture supporting them. Skills are easy to learn, once you’ve made the mental shift. It’s the mind shift that delivers the value for both companies, and everyone involved.

Value as a service is an illumination of the future of business exchange, i.e. quantifiable value. You either provide it and compete or offer vague assurance, busy work and mere customers’ satisfaction on the road to irrelevance.  We no longer live in a world of product or services. Customers seek outcomes and brands promises is paramount. Value as a Service precisely highlights this shift to an outcome-based value approach and provides a roadmap on how to excel in a future of quantifiable value.

The Big Three – Key Points

Key point # 1: Leadership needs to work to instill a set of core values that the full company agrees to work with.

Key point #2: Good product and excellent customer service are no longer enough. Constant and never-ending enhancing your value are the key.

Key point #3: Value as a Service starts and ends with leadership.

One Last Thing

“What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a headwind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.” – Jeff Bezos

H3 LEADERSHIP: BE HUMBLE, STAY HUNGRY, ALWAYS HUSTLE

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H3 Leadership: Be humble, Stay Hungry and Always Hustle. It’s a book filled with insight from over 2 decades of work and expertise as a leader. The author, Brad Lomenick, shares his hard-earned encounters on the best way to develop a fantastic leadership habit and put it to use because there’s a difference between knowing and doing. Knowing that a habit takes time to develop, he designed a plan which might assist leaders, both from the organization and outside world, to develop a consistent habit which produces great leadership results. Leading tends to be more comfortable than leadership. Leadership is constant work. It is put into practice every day in the work we do, the tasks we take responsibility for, the patterns we produce and it hangs on the success we might stumble upon.

Brad makes his readers understand the 20 most important habits to cultivate as a leader and orders them into 3 segments: BE HUMBLE, STAY HUNGRY, ALWAYS HUSTLE.

Segment #1: BE HUMBLE

Habit #1 – Self-Discovery: Know who you are.

Habit #2 – Openness: Share the real you with others.

Habit #3 – Meekness: Remember it’s not about you.

Habit #4 -Conviction: Stick to your own principles.

Habit #5  – Faith: Prioritize your day, so God is first.

Habit #6 – Assignment: Stay out of your calling.

 

Segment #2 – STAY HUNGRY

Habit #7 – Ambition: Develop an appetite for what’s bull.

Habit #8 – Curiosity: Keep learning.

Habit #9 – Passion: Love what you do.

Habit #10 – Innovation: Stay current, creative and engaged.

Habit #11 – Inspiration: Nurture a vision for a better tomorrow.

Habit #12 – Bravery: Take calculated risks.

 

Segment #3 – ALWAYS HUSTLE

Habit #13 – Excellence: Establish standards that frighten you.

Habit #14 – Stick-with-it-ness: Take the long view.

Habit #15 – Execution: Dedicate to completion.

Habit #16 – Team Building: Create an environment which attracts and keeps the best and brightest.

Habit #17 – Partnership: Collaborate with co-workers and competitors.

Habit #18 – Margin: Nurture far healthy rhythms.

Habit #19 – Generosity: Leave the world a better location.

Habit #20 – Succession: Locate power in passing the baton.

Briefly about self-discovery; nurturing the habit of self-discovery entails becoming intentional about your daily life rhythms by listening to your life, observing your attitudinal patterns and setting your personal life apart from your professional assignment. Self-discovery is a position you cultivate intentionally not a clinic you finish. Trust me, individuals will choose to follow a leader who is always real over a leader who is always right. The next generation will be attracted to a leader’s realness rather than a leader’s riches. Jeff stated, and I quote “The more sway you make, the more you have to lose, the less likely you are to be exposed and share your own battle.” Humble leaders are leaders, they make it about others and stay approachable.

The best leaders according to Jeff are principled leaders. They understand the differences between principle and personal preferences and are willing to encourage the right things and stand against the wrong things. These leaders protect their reputation, value and conscience, developing the habit of conviction. It is doing what’s right rather than what’s easy, being effective and not only efficient. And the further you go, the higher you climb as a leader and guess what?… the harder it gets. Talent and ability get you to the top but what keeps you there is integrity and character. Nothing comes easy.

If you are not learning, you are not leading; if you are not growing, you are not going. At the point when it gets interesting, it is vital for you to be interested. Passion takes you farther.

Leadership is a choice, not a position. Listen to your followers to make an influence. People follow who they trust and not the position.

 

THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS

Keypoint #1: The best leaders are leaders with principles and integrity.

Keypoint #2: When it gets interesting, it is crucial you are interested.

Keypoint #3: Talent and ability can take you to the top but what keeps you there is character and integrity.

One Last Thing

Hustle beats talent when talent doesn’t hustle. So, stay hungry, stay foolish.

Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done

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Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done. It’s a breaking through book that’s so keen on harnessing better productivity is target setting, focusing on set aims, been powerful and more. Jeff said as a way to finish we need to get rid of perfection first’. This usually means the less we think about how perfect things ought to be the more productive we become. The battle is with perfection. It can occasionally be the reason why we do not start things from the first case, but as Jon describes a gorgeous beginning isn’t the most significant barrier. The start does issue.

The beginning is important. The first few steps are crucial, but they aren’t the most important. Do you know precisely what things more and makes the beginning look almost silly and simple and almost insignificant? The finish. By not targeting perfection, the result might seem to be better. You get a surprise, something you did not see coming as there’s no room for surprises with regards to perfectionism.

Then Jon Acuff informs us about the different type of motives we could be very sensitive to: self-doubt or achievement. Self-doubt is that internal voice which thinks precision is crucial.

To prevent failure, we need perfectionism. How exposed will we believe whenever we finish something, and it isn’t as perfect as we once anticipated it to be. Therefore, we get frustrated before we finish. To get the most gratifying result, add a few fun, and divide your aims into half and select the best alternative forgone. Lofty targets that make us get to the stars are fantastic, but they could have us distribute to perfectionism, and for that reason, we can never finish what we started. Nobody wishes to be known as the man that achieves only half the target that he planned.

In order words, we are not the superheroes we’d love to be. We simply cannot do whatever the world wants us to do, and the earlier we realize and learn to say no, the more likely we are to succeed in what we mean yes, to. Acuff’s solution would be to cut the target in half, down to a thing which might not look entirely as praiseworthy, but it’s manageable. After we may attain the seemingly small objectives, we are much more prone to continue going, that makes us more prone to succeed. He also points to the 2 distractions which perfectionism will bring to our manner: obstacles and hiding areas.

The book shows clearly that beginning without being dramatic doesn’t justify a successful ending of a job. Everything cannot be perfect. There’s no such thing as ideal, is there? What ideal looks like for you to be completely different from what perfect looks like to someone else. Jeff helps his reader to understand that to get it all done, you have to take it bit by bit and not focus on the ‘all.’  Doing it in bits makes us achieve more in less time because as humans, we are more efficient when we focus on one thing that different things clamoring for our attention.

THE BIG THREE – KEYPOINT

Keypoint #1: There’s joy in imperfection

Keypoint #2: Splitting goals brings about better results.

Keypoint #3: To achieve a successful goal, going to your hiding place or using a great obstacle is never an option.

One Last Thing

Progress is quiet. It whispers. Perfectionism yells hides and failure progress.

SPRINT

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Jake Knapp a Google venture partner, alongside John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz birth the idea of Sprint which majors on how to solve problems and test new ideas in just five days. This book is a practical guide to choose among many best ideas and make most out of the experience.  The concept of sprint came up when Jack had to come up with an essential feature for Gmail which would automatically sort messages. He had to innovate fast. To do that, he came up with three key aspects to manage the project process:

DEADLINES: Tight deadlines eliminate procrastination. The shorter the time, the faster the result because every allotted time is filled with an activity

GET PEOPLE WITH DIFFERENT SKILL SETS: Get people with a different skill set into one room. The more diverse a team is, the better.  A better sprint team usually consists of seven categories of people and less irrespective of their hierarchy level.

THE RESULT: The result must be a concrete prototype. What gets you real feedback is when you present a functional idea. Brainstorming vague ideas is easy but not worth it.

These three-fundamental concepts work well when each sprint get together one on one and work together to produce something of actual value.

Jack furthermore explains sprint as a method that helps define a problem, compare ideas, prototype one of them and get feedback from customers all in five days. Though it might seem like an intensive process, it has a great potential for a big payout.

Before the sprint process, a recommended number of seven people with a different skill sets must be included:

 

  • The Decider (someone who have enough information on the problem or the leader of the company

 

  • The Marketing Expert
  • The Finance Expert
  • The Customer Expert (someone who has a unique customer view preferably from the customer care unit)
  • An Engineer or Logic Expert
  • The Troublemaker (Someone who always have contrary opinion)
  • The Facilitator (someone who is unbiased about a decision and keeps things on time). Usually a project manager).

 

 

The idea is to make sure everyone on the team understands the problem that needs to be solved and create a purposeful start on Monday.

Jack did a great job by defining the purpose of each day and what needs to be accomplished.

Monday’s goal is to create a discussion around the set goal, map out the challenge and define the problem that will be tackled on the sprint

Tuesday’s goal is to find a solution to the problem identified on Monday. Each person on the team writes down their proposed solution on a piece of paper and is given at least three minutes to present the solution to the whole team out of which the best there will be selected.

Wednesday’s goal is to make a decision. The best way is to critique all ideas and choose the one that will be explored in the sprint. This can be done by discussing sketches and then participants can get to vote via color stickers for their favorite idea. It is advisable to keep all ideas anonymous to avoid skewing of people’s opinion. Once the idea is picked, the team can then storyboard the prototype

Thursday’s goal is to make a prototype of the concept selected on Wednesday. Not a perfect prototype but a reality. The team can make use of keynotes or interactive prototypes other than professional tools. Professional tools take longer time and make you focus on too many details.

Friday’s goal is to see the customer’s reactions by interviewing them. You do not need thousands of customers to carry out the interview; five to six people is enough to expose 85% of the problem and get qualitative feedback. Record your conversations so the team can see the result. Jack gave some hints on how the interview process should go like interacting with the customer, putting the customer at ease, etc.

Once the interview is concluded, the team should go ahead and analyze the result to know if the prototype us promising and deserves further development or if the prototype fails.

Either way, design sprint is a way of finding answers to big questions, bring attention to work that matter, reduce risk and get better solutions.

THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS

Key point #1:  Design Sprint reduces risk, proffers the answer to significant problems and brings about a better solution.

Key point #2: Sprint is not a one-man business; it can best be carried out by a team made up of different skill sets.

Key point #3: The core concept of Sprint is to decrease the waste of resources (time, energy and money) on the wrong ideas.

One Last Thing

“By asking people for their input early in the process, you help them feel invested in the outcome.”

― Jake Knapp, Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

The $100 Startup

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The $100 startup by Chris Guillebeau is an insightful book that contains many real-life case studies. It describes the possibility of starting and running a successful business with a tiny team. It also gives great insight on how you can start a small business of your own, giving you the ability  to live on your own terms- from positioning yourself, finding your audience and prospects, creating your products or services, marketing, scaling and leveraging.

 

Guillebeau identified three key areas to start a business: a product/service people are willing to pay for, a group of people who are willing to pay for it such value and a way to get paid. To succeed in business, you need to merge your passion and your skill with something that is useful and essential to other people. If you focus on providing value above all else, your business will be successful. The value in this sense means ‘helping people.’ A vast majority of people want more of some things (money, time, love) and less of other things (debt, stress, pain). The key is to focus on your added value or what pain you take away to improve their life. Give people what they really want and not what you think they should have or want instead.

The author explains that not every passion or hobby is really worth building into a business and as incredible as it sounds, not everyone will want to have a business based on passion or hobby. Many ‘follow-your-passion’ businesses are built on something indirectly related and not the passion or hobby itself. There’s nothing wrong with a hobby, but if you’re operating a business, the primary goal is to make money, that’s it. Short term or long term, just make sure that making money is the focus.

A ubiquitous characteristic of successful startups is that they operate on a “plan as you go” basis. This gives the startup the opportunity to respond to the changing needs of its customers yet still get your business out as soon as possible with a bias toward action. One common mistake is thinking about your audience in terms of categories such as age, race, and gender. Instead, Chris Guillebeau recommends thinking of them in terms of shared beliefs, interests and values. A survey to understand customers and prospect is a good strategy, as long as it is concrete. The more specific and shorter the better.

When creating an offer, think carefully about the possible objections and then respond to them in advance. There is a difference between a good offer and a great offer, urgency. Immediately after a customer purchases something, that customer is hiring you. Look for small but meaningful ways to go above and beyond their expectations. They are not just buying a product or service from you, they are walking the experience with you.

It is vital to work on your business daily. Part-time or full time, work on your business every day and focus that work into key activities that improve the customer experience. Avoid just by responding to an urgent needs that accurate.  

Perhaps one of my favorite takeaways from this book is the advice to leverage skills and contacts. This approach places you in more than one place at the same time with outsourcing, affiliate recruitment, and partnerships. Ideally, you should be able to grow the business without dramatically increasing the workload, allowing you to scale without hiring more people when you make careful choices.

Select two to three metrics that are the lifeblood of your business, then check them monthly.  

In conclusion, a business that is scalable is both teachable and valuable. If you ever want to sell your business, you’ll need to build teams and reduce owner dependency.

THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS

Key point #1: Keep it simple
Key point #2: Value action over plans
Key point #3: Set your own terms

One Last Thing
“A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.” —JOHN LE CARRÉ”  ― Chris Guillebeau, The $100 Startup

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

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Peter Drucker is known to be the most famous management author of the century. This book does not treat innovation as an academic subject but outstandingly written with rich organizational life examples using management view. The author focuses on how innovation and entrepreneurship can be learned and applied by anyone. He wants everyone to have the mindset of changing how they do things to make a massive difference.

This book gave a meaningful and provocative definition of innovation. Peter Drucker began by teaching innovation and entrepreneurship in the mid-1950’s putting into writing his experience from the past three decades of testing his ideas. He derived his examples from the experiences he had as a consultant and the experience of people he mentored and taught.

He started by drawing his readers attention to a mystery: why in the American economy between 1965-1988, despite the recession, oil shock, inflation in some government and industry, there was still a massive job growth. Most people describe the growth as “hi-tech”. The key technology driving job growth is not widget or gadget but entrepreneurship management. The force of entrepreneur is always more significant than the current state of the economy suggest Drucker. Huge successes recorded by great influencers such as Mc Donald was majorly due to better management of a service previously run by mom and pops owners.  Everything, from the production of the product, selling technique, the way it was served, and the package was refined beyond belief. It was not the ‘hi-tech’ thing but doing things in a different, better and meaningful way and in the process creating new value.

 

In this book, Drucker sees entrepreneurship has a way of doing things differently. It is not a personality trait but a feature to be observed in people’s actions and functionality. Entrepreneurs are made to upset and disorganized. He/she is a wild card that generates wealth through creative destruction. They deal with uncertainty but still have the ability to explore change and respond positively and intelligently to change.  Embracing changes and trying out different things is the best way to invest resources. Entrepreneurship becomes risky when simple and well-known rules are violated. They become less risky when it is systematically managed and purposeful.

 

Innovation, on the other hand, is simple and often has nothing to do with technology or inventions. Science and technology are the least promising of all sources of innovation, Drucker suggests. He says in reality, innovation result to success when you take advantage of an unexpected change in the society. Innovation becomes a great deal when it meets the market through the catalyst of entrepreneurial management then your start creating things of great value.  Good innovation is always much focused. It is not about trying to do many things but just one thing excellently well. The most successful products are those that save effort, time, money and save their users from thinking. People do not purchase a product but what the product does for them. The bigger picture of innovation is to provide satisfaction where there was none before. The book concludes with Drucker giving a clearer picture of what the future holds.

The Big Three – Key points

Key Point #1: Entrepreneurship and it advises to invest in resources, explore change and respond positively to it.

Key Point #2: Innovation and it advises to innovation should save time, energy and provide satisfaction where there is none.

Key Point #3: People do not purchase a product but what the product does for them. The bigger picture of innovation is to provide satisfaction where there was none before.

 

One Last Thing

“Entrepreneurs, by definition, shift resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield. Of course, there is a risk they may not succeed. But if they are even moderately successful, the returns should be more than adequate to offset whatever risk there might be.”

― Peter F. Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

The First 20 Hours. How to Learn Anything Fast

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The First 20 Hours was written with an intention to enlighten people on how to rapidly acquire a skill. The key to learning any skill is to have a clear definition of what you think will be “good enough” and focus on the small parts that make that “good enough” skill. The author, Josh Kaufman, tailored the three major areas of this book towards principles to learn effectively. He organizes them in three key components:

1- Rapid Skill Acquisition

2- Effective learning

3- Effectiveness of the approach

RAPID ACQUISITION SKILL

Rapid skill acquisition is a way of breaking down a particular skill into the smallest pieces possible for easier processing then identifying which of those pieces are most important and deliberately practicing those elements first.  There are four steps in RapidSkill Acquisition process.

First you need to deconstruct the skill into the smallest possible subskills; the second step is to learn enough about each subskill in order to practice intelligently and self-correct during practice; the third step is to remove any mental, emotional and physical barriers that may get in the way of practice; and lastly, practice the most important sub-skills for at least twenty hours.

EFFECTIVE LEARNING

Any time you start practicing something new, your skills will naturally improve in a very short period of time. The key is to start practicing as soon as possible. Not thinking about practicing or worrying about practicing, but actually practicing. By just simply practicing, the skill set will start escalating. To guarantee the process of practicing is effective, take into consideration the following:

1.    Identify mental models and mental hooks.

2.    Talk to practitioners to set expectations.

3.    Eliminate distractions in your environment.

4.    Use spaced repetition and reinforcement for memorization.

5.    Create scaffolds and checklists.

6.    Make and test predictions.

7.    Honor your biology.

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE APPROACH

Not only does Josh talk the talk, but he also walks the walk when it comes to the principles guiding Rapid Skill Acquisition and effective learning. To put them to the test he chose six skills he was interested in learning,

•    Yoga

•    Programming

•    Touch typing with a Colemak keyboard layout

•    Playing Go

•    Windsurfing

•    Ukulele

Josh puts 20 hours into practicing each skill and he didn’t withhold the feedback. A more significant part of the book is devoted to his experience in these skills. Briefly, programming which is one of his “wants to acquire” skills was a big hit. He wanted to create a functioning web application.  But guess what, He did not spend the precious hours stuck in textbooks, NO, he rather focused on basic elements of creating a program and then applied a “build – test – fix” approach to honing it into a working prototype. He utilized the full 20 hours, 10 of which were spent on research and the remaining 10 on the programming.  In the end, he had a couple of working software solutions. It was a breakthrough.

On a final note, the only time you can choose to practice is today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next month or next year. Today. So, to all my life learners and self-taught folks… when you wake up in the morning, you have a choice and this book helps you to make the right choice. Stop procrastinating and start learning. It will take just 20 hours.

THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS

Key point #1 – Always make the next skill you’re going to learn the one you’re most excited about.

Key point #2 – Think about emotional and real-life obstacles beforehand.

Key point #3- Initially, focus on quantity over quality.

One Last Thing

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

― Albert Einstein

Hit Makers

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Hit Maker takes an in-depth look at what makes a viral or popular product. In this book, Thompson provides detailed research on the key factors that cause content and products to become popular. Thompson argues that the products that become popular are a balance of familiarity and newness. He cited Raymond Loewy, the industrial designer, whose approach was summed up in his acronym MAYA “the Most Advanced Yet Acceptable” idea. This theory explains that people are simultaneously Neophobic, afraid of the new, and Neophilic, attracted to the new. In order for a new idea, content or product, to be popular, it must balance this tension. It is not the most innovative or advanced products that become sought but those that blend acceptability with innovation.  He also argues that there is a need for newness, as there is a danger in too much familiarity or too much of the same content which leads to a sharp fall in popularity. There must be a balance between newness and innovation.

Derek Thompson believes that familiar ideas or content leads to more liking of the content. He quotes an interesting study where people were asked to either name two things they liked about their partner or ten things they liked. The study found that people liked their partner more if they are asked to name just two things they liked. When asked to name ten things, it became harder and they rated their partners lower after the exercise. He uses many examples where companies use familiarity, including movies. Because we like familiarity, a key ingredient of popularity is repeated exposure. Most of the top revenue grossing movies of the last ten years have been based on popular novels. There is safety and familiarity in such movies. Also, car manufacturers blend familiarity with newness by changing a car’s style every few years. Derek Thompson also explores products that manage to make it big through the combination of timing, weird circumstances and savvy use of repetition while their pairs never made a splash. After reaching a tipping point, customers do not just buy a product but the popular conversion. A great example of this is Apple products. It is no secret that Apple has somehow lost its magic when it comes to disrupting markets through innovative products and yet, it became the first American company to surpass a trillion dollar value as I write this Bite.  No one wants to be the last to read or watch so they buy to participate in the conversion.

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One of my favorite sections of the book is on the power of creating popular phrases. It talks about the power of repetition. Through Thompson’s lens, repetition can explain anything that is popular. He argues that human beings love music because of our love for repetition. Repetition, he says, is the God particle of music.

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Hit Makers is full of “aesthetic aha”. This is a term for the moment when you look at something and for the first time, you understand and everything just clicks and comes together. The moment when you read an essay’s thesis and feel that it’s expressing something you’ve thought of before but never had the chance to put into words. It is that moment when your eyes light up because something clicked and was understood in your brain, the “aha moment.” It is beyond the feeling that something is familiar. It’s when something new, challenging or surprising that opens a door into a feeling of comfort, meaning or familiarity.

THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS

Key point #1: Popularity will always be found in the balance between familiarity and newness.

Key point #2: Repetition is key in creating popular and viral phrases.

Key point #3: It is not the most innovative or advanced products that become sought after but those that blend acceptability with innovation.

One Last Thing

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular